Maria Iorio and Raphaël Cuomo are an artist duo based in Geneva and Berlin. Favouring a collaborative praxis and long-term research, Iorio/Cuomo’s recent projects engage with past and present global mobilities and unfold the intertwined histories shaped by those movements of life, (post)colonial encounters, migrating forms and sounds. Investigating the conditions under which dominant historical narratives are produced and can be challenged, their hybrid cinematic forms manifest unheard voices, disregarding collective experiences, resistant subjectivities. New knowledges come to light, shared through a performative archival practice, translation processes and the aesthetical and political dimensions of listening.
Their work integrates a curatorial approach and revisits the expanded field of moving image practices and “minor cinemas”—experimental, amateur, feminist, decolonial.
Iorio/Cuomo have presented their work internationally in various exhibitions, curated programmes and film festivals, including How To Find Meaning In Dead Time (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin) in the framework of Archival Assembly #1 (Arsenal, Berlin); Cronache di quel tempo (Istituto Svizzero, Palermo); That relation between us, or among us (Archive Kabinett, Berlin); Documenta 14 Public Program (Athens); If Not For That Wall (CiC, Cairo); Quadriennale 16 (Rome); Shooting at Clocks (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin); Logica del passaggio (Querini Stampalia, Venice); Europe. The Future of History (Kunsthaus Zürich); Twisted Realism (Argos, Brussels); Chewing the Scenery (54th Venice Biennale); Der Standpunkt der Aufnahme (Arsenal, Berlin); The Interpreter (Les Complices, Zürich); The Maghreb Connection (Townhouse Gallery, Cairo), as well as Alternative Film/Video (Belgrade); Courtisane; DOK Leipzig; FID Marseille; Ji.hlava IDFF; Visions du réel – where their last film Chronicles of that time was awarded the Special Jury Award (national competition) in April 2021.